Hunger Affects Credit Union Employees

Credit unions across the nation over many years have collectively raised tens of millions in money and food to feed needy families. In the state of Maine, for example, more than $11.3 million has been raised since 1990 when the Maine Credit Unions’ Campaign for Ending Hunger was launched. This initiative is still going strong and carries an ambitious goal of ending hunger by 2030 in collaboration with the AmeriCorps VISTA program, according to the Maine Credit Union League.

But what credit unions may be overlooking is that food insecurity is a growing problem that’s affecting not just their members and communities, but some of their employees as well.

That’s why Florida’s largest credit union, Suncoast Credit Union, opened a food pantry for employees, while Enbright Credit Union in Tennessee and Minnesota’s Affinity Plus Federal Credit Union opened pantries to deliver food more quickly and efficiently to the communities they serve.

Linda Fales, community development officer at the $15.7 billion Suncoast in Tampa, got the idea to open an employee food pantry when she was managing a snack drive for pantries at local schools.

People assume, Fales explained, that employees who have stable jobs with good pay and benefits are OK. But like the members they serve, their lives get complicated, and they can run into rough patches and hard struggles through no fault of their own, making ends harder to meet. When anyone reaches that point in their life, they may need a little more help to get through those challenging times.

“The statistics would tell you that if your staff is indicative of the communities you serve, you’re going to have people that are going to have struggles. You’re going to have people who have issues,” she said.

And food insecurity is among them.

“It’s not that we’re saying we don’t pay our employees well, and we don’t have appropriate benefits for our employees,” Fales said. “What it says is that we care. We care about you. We care about the story you may have. We care about your family, and we want to be here for you to help you through your most difficult times.”

Fales worked with Mary McDonald, Suncoast’s director of community relations, to draw up a business plan for the employee food pantry. After getting the OK from senior leadership, a vacant room was transformed into a pantry.

Food insecurity, generally defined as households with limited access to food because of lack of money or other resources, has always been a persistent problem. But it has become a growing struggle for millions of Americans.

More than one in five (21.6%) adults in the U.S. said they live in a household with food insecurity in the summer of 2022, an increase of more than 6% from April 2021, according to research released in September by the Urban Institute Health Policy Center in Washington, D.C. What’s more, research from the White House National Strategy on Hunger, Nutrition and Health found that people who live in households with food insecurity are more likely to skip meals and experience hunger, which can lead to health issues.

High food price inflation, along with elevated costs for other basic needs such as transportation and rent, have likely eroded food budgets in the last year, according to the Urban Institute’s report. In addition, some of the safety net responses that buffered food insecurity in 2021 are no longer in place. Unemployment rates have declined significantly since early 2020, and salaries have increased for many, but wage growth has not kept pace with rapidly rising inflation.

Moreover, a national poll on healthy aging by the University of Michigan suggested three-quarters of people over 50 in the U.S. say the rising cost of groceries has affected them somewhat or a lot, and nearly a third say they are eating less healthily because of increased food costs.

Suncoast’s food pantry is in a centralized location that provides employees with privacy, and they are allowed to take as much food as they need. The pantry is stocked with many types of common food staples, and it also has a freezer to store breads and frozen dishes such as pizza and other dinners.

For employees who live in other parts of the state, arrangements are made to deliver the food in a plain, unmarked box through the credit union’s couriers.

Suncoast employees regularly donate the most needed food staples or donate funds to buy food.

Fales said the pantry has morphed into a resource center of sorts and now includes a section for babies, which stocks items such as diapers, wipes and clothing. For employees who may need assistance in other areas, Suncoast employees have produced and give out booklet guides that list services in every Florida county. Financial education resources are also made available.

Since the pantry opened in 2019, Fales estimated about 100 employees have benefited. More than 2,390 employees work at Suncoast, according to its third quarter NCUA report.

“Employees are so grateful to know that we care enough to have this available to them,” Fales said. “It’s been a very, very positive thing.”

She noted the pantry/resource center has also helped those employees’ families.

The $86 million Enbright has always been involved in food drives at one time or another throughout its history, but the Nashville-based financial cooperative noticed the problem of food insecurity has been worsening.

Just like Suncoast, Enbright looked at the data in its state and found that nearly a million people face hunger and nearly 240,000 of them are children. What’s more, Enbright CEO Ronald V. Smith II learned from a good friend that military families are struggling with food insecurity.

“We got in touch with the person who runs the Armed Services YMCA in Fort Campbell in Clarksville, and she told us they have military families coming in daily for food,” he said. “And at one point it got so bad that she had to install refrigeration units so she could store milk and other perishable foods for the military families.”

Smith said his marketing manager, Christina Soliday, got the idea to open a food pantry at the credit union’s main branch so that they would have food stocked and ready to be distributed quickly and efficiently at any time.

Since the pantry opened in November 2021, the credit union has distributed more than 200 pounds of food, including dog and cat food. The credit union collects food staples from members and at car dealerships, where customers place their donated food in Enbright-branded boxes. Amy Johnson, Enbright’s dealer services representative for indirect lending, collects the food from the credit union’s partnership dealers. At times and when available, the credit union buys, at cost, food from Sam’s Club, Kroger’s and Publix.

To mark the 10th anniversary of Plus It Forward Day at the $3.8 billion Affinity Plus, the staff at the credit union’s Rochester, Minn., branch opened a food pantry in October.

“We wanted to do something tangible, and we wanted to do something sustainable that could last well beyond the Plus It Forward Day,” Rochester Branch Manager Billie Packer said. She noted there is a community need for a food pantry, particularly in the northwest section of Rochester.

Employees Taylor Kelzenberg and Lance Kafta built and installed a small pantry structure painted in the credit union’s purple color. It stands on the north corner of the branch’s property so that people can drive up and take any food products they may need in privacy. The branch also has a private space in its foyer where food is stored and available for anyone to access 24/7. Employees and members donate food staples to keep the pantry stocked.

Packer got the idea to install a food pantry from the staff at Affinity Plus’ Faribault branch, which has been operating a similar pantry for about five years.

“They call it the ‘Little Blessings Box,’ and it’s highly used,” she said.